It should be slowed down so new players can actually learn how to play the game.

That and experience the story. I have to say, many of the revamped quests are unique, structured, fun, and follow an interesting narrative. I understand the importance of "end-game" but people forget why it's called that in the first place: there are 89 levels of awesome before the mindless grinding and raiding. It would be cool if blizzard encouraged us to experience it more.

Although the thread is a bit old, I fully agree on it. Leveling in the 1-60 area especially (since they did rewamp that for a reason, did they not?) takes too little and I remember, not sitting in inns or capitals, not using heirlooms, not doing dungeons, not grinding, only doing the quests, I still outleveled each area by 2 levels (in the 1-10 I ended at 12, in the 10-20 at 24 and so on, you get the point). By third zone (Ashenvale) I started getting a bunch of grey quests... that was a bit sad.

To be honest, leveling experience needs to be toned down by about 20-25% at least in the 1-60 or even 1-70 part. It's going way too fast and it's just boring. Why make all that content if you're going to rocket boost people to 90? It doesn't make sense.

For people with alts, make an item available that boosts xp gain by 25% and we're done, like heirrooms but this being a buff that works till max level.

Well while this thread is old, it seems the discussion is reignited, so...

Why not have different XP options at the NPC who blocks your XP gain?

He currently changes your XP gain to 0%, also known as not gaining XP. How about having options to cut your experience gain by a certain percentage, such as say, 50%, to allow people to set their pace slower if they wish?

That way, people who are fine with the current XP gain (like me), change nothing. Those who want to slow down can choose to do so.

I am in no way claiming this is a good idea or that they should do it. It just crossed my mind, and since a thread on the subject popped up, why the hell not?

Originally Posted by Tya

As a warlock, allow me to be the first to say that I get tremendous amounts of joy from watching fear pathing take you to Africa.

Originally Posted by Drayarr

Twinking is like going back to school when you are 30, just to be smarter than the other kids.

you enjoy leveling, that makes you the very small minority, most people who play wow do it for the end game content and want just the opposite. i wish they had options to speed up leveling even more or even a program that granted free level 90's. if anything i'd say they should reduce the xp needed 1-85 by 30% and reduce 85-90 by 50%. it just takes too long and is very tedious and pointless when you've done it all already 10+ times.

"A lot of players (including me) like to complete all quests in a zone before leaving it and then proceed to the next one. You can't really do that in Cata, because you will find yourself surrounded by grey quests."

I dont understand why you dont just... Ignore the color? Or ignore your level at all? You want it to be slower, so why dont you just play the content and ignore the numbers. Experience the content at your pace. They give little to no exp. while they are grey so just do them and it wont effect the rest of us who have leveled more than too many characters through the boring content. You get to see your content, the rest who have done it too many times get their fast leveling.

Although the thread is a bit old, I fully agree on it. Leveling in the 1-60 area especially (since they did rewamp that for a reason, did they not?) takes too little and I remember, not sitting in inns or capitals, not using heirlooms, not doing dungeons, not grinding, only doing the quests, I still outleveled each area by 2 levels (in the 1-10 I ended at 12, in the 10-20 at 24 and so on, you get the point). By third zone (Ashenvale) I started getting a bunch of grey quests... that was a bit sad.

And that's just barebones. I'm pumping up a rogue with a full set of heirlooms; it took longer to get from 1-15 than it did for 15-50. The second you hit instance level, you just steamroll through dungeons for 2 or 3 levels at a time. It's a pain in the ass with dual gathering professions because I rapidly out-level the nodes and creatures I need to keep those progressing. There are many playsessions spent running around in areas I heavily out level just for nodes.

Now, it's not a particularly large personal concern as this, and the following monk, will be the final two classes to cap, and I definitely take full advantage of rocketing them up. It does take away from the experience of the game though, and new players don't get the chance to really experiment with new abilities / talents, or really get to see the rest of the game.

My hunter took 18 days /played to hit 60 in vanilla, though I spent a lot of time just messing around past 55.
I have 6 days /played throughout the entire existence of my warlock, who hit 85 in the back half of the DS cycle (geared up fairly well for LFR), and was my second 90.
Says something about the pace of the game now. Not necessarily a horrible thing, but I do agree that it can be dialled back a bit.

It'd certainly keep new players engaged much longer. It'd raise the quality of playing if they're encouraged to jump into different playstyles as well, rather than sitting in a dungeon they don't really have to think about from 15-60. I'd do a fairly substantial (50%+) increase in experience required to level up until 60, and inflate the experience gain on heirlooms proportionately to avoid any major disruption.

I appreciate that some people are late to the party or they don't get involved with endgame activities, but that's no reason that people who have seen all this content before to have to spend more time in it. Ok, you like herp derping in The Barrens then strolling up into Stonetalon, I was tired of both those zones six years ago and everyone who's cool just wants to be doing endgame stuff anyway, be it PvP, PvE or achievement whoring, they all just want another 90 to have some fun on.

Levelling has become a chore, and I'm not one of the sillies that say "get rid of it" but it needs toning down when it's just not fun anymore. I was there for the start of vanilla and I will agree more than anyone that levelling used to be a LOT of fun. But now it's so dumbed down, the mobs are easy and come in single pulls, the quests have a mark on the map telling you where to go, things sparkle, mounts are cheap, all the challenge is taken away from it and it's just become another grind. Whereas in vanilla, if you wanted to make a decent time (sub 7 days) to 60 you needed to be good at the game. You had to know a good levelling route and be able to take on groups of (groups!!!??) mobs higher than you. You also needed to to find the money for a mount, at 40 and really use your class abilities to the max. Vanilla did actually teach you stuff, if you wanted to get through it quick and that was valuable, now you could probably get through just auto attacking as long as you were patient enough.

Why not just keep doing the quests even after they are grey? You'll mostly stop gainnig xp from them; finish the zone; then resume questing on the next zone where quests are more level appropriate.
You finish the zone at the pace you'de want and people who want to level faster can just skipp through them.
I personaly enjoy level but after a copple of alts it gets tedious and I just want to get it done as quickly as possible.

If you think leveling is too fast, stop using BoA's, don't go to a new zone the second you can (do every quest) or maybe even *gasp* pay attention to the quest text and lore. I think leveling takes way too long, personally, and wouldn't even consider any further alts if it takes any longer. I can't believe anyone actually thinks it's too fast.

I enjoyed levelling a lot in BC. It took ages. You had quest lines that took you from SW to Tanaris to IF to Hinterlands to Azshara. And I didn't complain because I knew no different. Was the travelling fun? No. I afked through every flight. I had an addon that estimated the time the flight would take, so I knew for how long I could afk. I afked while waiting for my hearthstone to come off CD. Was it fun? No. But I knew no better.

Quest difficulties sometimes made a huge jump in a questing zone, so that you needed to leave and return later if you wanted to finish up your stuff. You probably just deleted those quests because you didn't go back to finish up your stuff.

I didn't enjoy levelling BECAUSE it took long. I enjoyed it DESPITE it because the game was new to me. And I enjoyed it through several characters even. Because it was all still new enough and exciting enough.

Today, the quests are much better streamlined and tell awesome stories. Back then, stuff was still fairly convoluted. The old quests too had their stories, but they weren't so clear-cut. It's all way less confusing now, something that is very nice for a new player. I remember how I spent a few hours googling on how to best make my way from SW to Ratchet for my warlock quest. That was a painful journey.

For everyone who likes questing, there's nothing that forces them to leave a zone when quests turn grey. Go and complete your Loremaster while you're on the appropriate level for a zone. There's no need to rush if you don't want to.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

The point of playing an MMO is end game, so no it doesnt need to be slowed down, if anything it needs to be dramatically shortened. Level 80 template characters for anyone max level.

NO! The point of an MMO is to play with an online community.

The point of a game, MMO or not, is to have fun both during the journey and at the end. By having the journey shortened and made easier and easier, the journey becomes less interesting, and as such, a major part of the game is kind of diminished. People go to end-game and care about that alone because the journey isn't as engaging. Not because they don't want to. For example, GW2 focuses on the journey as well as the end, and it's doing ok. SW:ToR focused on the journey alone and... well you know what happened. WoW is more and more making the problem of focusing on the end-game alone. And when this goes fully, less and less people will start to join, you know why?

Because they'll find about this amazing game, start it and find the journey too fast and easy and they'll belive the entire game is like that. And not knowing about heroic modes or other stuff... they might not be interested in playing a game as hard as... Farmville through which you burst too fast.

An opinion that thinks levels are bad, but should be replaced with content that is gated until you have enough experience?

o... k...

I think I'll stick with my original assessment.

Character growth, especially in a game that relies on subscriptions, and thus consistent player attendance, is rather critical. To replace levels with some other arbitrary number or gate solves nothing. It's still levels with a different label.

And to digress, the biggest flaw when it comes to WoW leveling isn't the levels themselves, it's that the content considered most 'important' is consistently only available to the highest levels. To enjoy all the game has to offer, max level is a prerequisite. Other flaws in the system have to do with how exponentially more powerful higher level players become, part of it has to do with how incredibly easy it is to attain max level (something that not all MMO's historically share).

What should happen is significantly increase the amount of xp needed to level, and tie an account-wide ability to increase xp gained on your all your alts for leveling, or just boost heirloom xp bonus modifier. This would at least allow new players to level at a decent pace and not rapidly, and alts to not be stuck in the slow process consequently.

The only thing that matters is max level unless you do EXP off BGs. Why would you want the leveling process slowed down? Do you enjoy kill this collect that quests until your eyes bleed that much? Or do you enjoy getting garbage quest rewards that are 99% worthless trash cause you are already in full BoA gear? WoW is just a console FPS from 1-90. Only at 90 does the game finally start.

im one of the rare folk that enjoy leveling. in fact leveling to me is more enjoyable than end game personally. gaining a level, accessing new abilities, new spells, thats the experience in a game im lookin for. the story and journey to the end is why i play games anymore these days. i simply dont have time nor have the interest in grinding the bgs/arenas, or pve instances for weeks on end. it just doesnt appeal to me anymore, so i can somewhat relate to the op.

disabling xp, personal opinion, takes the element of progression out of the process. theres no desire, no initiative to complete something when theres no reward. granted i love the story, and i love the lore of just about all games i play but theres also a small part of me that desires to have some sense of accomplishment when doing it. i mean most people, at least i think, if given a choice between doing a task that grants a reward and not granted a reward i think would chose the task that grants the reward.

anyways, its not a big deal really, i stopped playin mid way thru cata, as like i said i have no desire or passion for end game type stuff anymore but i did feel like the 1-60 leveling process was far too fast. i remember leveling a shaman ult right before i quit and i was in felwood, with no heirlooms or guild perks mind you, and was gaining a level like every hour-hour and a half